Resistance to Racial Equity in U.S. Federalism and Its Impact on Fragmented Regions

• Author: Katie Kaufmann,Sheila Grigsby,Sara John,Désirée Jones-Smith,Cordaryl Patrick,Christopher Prener,Alicia Hernàndez,Adriano Udani,Mark Tranel
• Published date: 01 August 2020
• Date: 01 August 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0275074020942063
• Subject Matter: Street-Level Crisis ManagementEquity, Race, Federalism, and COVID-19: A Recipe for Exposing Inequalities Throughout the United States

https://doi.org/10.1177/0275074020942063

American Review of Public Administration

2020, Vol. 50(6-7) 658 –667

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0275074020942063

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Equity, Race, Federalism, and COVID-19: A Recipe for Exposing Inequalities Throughout the United States

Introduction

Questions about federalism feel newly discovered after each

major national crisis. Yet, we also feel that questions con-

cerning race and racism, especially in public administration,

do not receive the same rebirth. The inattention of race and

racism in public administration scholarship has received

much attention (Alexander, 1997; Stivers, 2007; Witt, 2006).

Scholars have defined racism as an illusory ideological sys-

tem of beliefs that maintain structures of social oppression

(Shelby, 2002; Stivers, 2007). Racism also does not require

racist actors, and can exist in systems and culture as well as

with individuals, both unconsciously and consciously

(Powell et al., 2006). Policymakers and public administrators

are certainly not above racist motivations and decisions.

Some have shown how they use their privilege to mask mali-

cious administrative intent (Adams & Balfour, 2004) while

others have brought more attention to how administrators

can rearticulate their decisions by publicly renouncing the

exercise of discretion in favor of adhering to the letter of the

law. As Camilla Stivers (2007) argued forcefully, “adminis-

trative practices can be infected with racism even though

individual administrators do not bear conscious animus

toward people of color. In this respect, racism, like adminis-

trative evil, is masked.”

As we write this commentary in the midst of watching

many U.S. communities muddle through and attempt to

circumvent the extraordinary impact of corona virus disease

(COVID)-19, it is frustrating to watch the Trump administra-

tion refuse to equitably respond to local areas, forcing states

and lower political subdivisions to fill in the gaps (Sawicky,

1999). Many conservatives have taken the pandemic to

exemplify the strengths of American federalism; however,

others have pointed to their longer term movement to hollow

out the state (Hacker, 2004; Kreitner, 2020; Mettler, 2010;

Thompson, 2020) and develop a “fend-for-yourself” federal-

ism (Walters, 1996) while other scholarship has shown that

policy devolution has led to states developing welfare sanc-

tions that disproportionately harm low-income Blacks (Soss

et al., 2011) and rely on highly discretionary and discrimina-

tory enforcement of immigration laws that unfairly incarcer-

ate Mexicans and Central Americans who are seeking refuge

942063ARPXXX10.1177/0275074020942063The American Review of Public AdministrationGrigsby et al.

research-article2020

1University of Missouri, St. Louis, USA

2American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, St. Louis, USA

3Inter-Faith Committee on Latin America, St. Louis, MO, USA

4United Way of Greater St. Louis, MO, USA

5St. Louis Economic Development Partnership, MO, USA

6Saint Louis University, MO, USA

Corresponding Author:

Adriano Udani, Department of Political Science, University of Missouri,

St. Louis, One University Blvd. 347 Social Sciences Building, St. Louis, MO

63121, USA.

Email: udania@umsl.edu

Resistance to Racial Equity in U.S. Federalism

and Its Impact on Fragmented Regions

Sheila Grigsby1, Alicia Hernàndez2, Sara John3, Désirée Jones-Smith1,

Katie Kaufmann4, Cordaryl Patrick5, Christopher Prener6,

Mark Tranel1, and Adriano Udani1

Abstract

In this commentary, we provide our ground-level observations of how the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19 or COVID)

has exposed weaknesses in our federal system to respond to local communities, particularly Black and Latina/os who live

and work in the St. Louis region. Our perspectives come from a virtual town hall hosted by the Community Innovation and

Action Center (CIAC) at the University of Missouri, St. Louis on April 18, 2020. Based on these initial public discussions, we

use St. Louis as a lens for arguing that government’s attenuated impact is not due to a natural disaster itself, but the inevitable

result of race-based policies that had worked against Black peoples over generations. The real failure involves our federalist

system’s lack of a commitment to racial equity—when race no longer is used to predict life outcomes, and outcomes for all

groups are improved—when designing the federal plan to respond to COVID-19 in local communities.

Keywords

racial equity, federalism, urban studies, COVID-19, public health